Pretty bad that I buy a Microsoft Surface RT and cannot watch the live streaming build conference on it. I realize that Silverlight is not supported in the "Metro" environment, however, they also said that it would be supported in the Desktop environment. However, that should be qualified by saying "Only on x86 based Windows 8" will it be supported.

This is really disappointing that Microsoft supported the Flash plug in RT, but won't support their own technology and then even more ironic they stream their Build conference (where they gave away Surface RTs by the way) in a technology that cannot be watched.

BTW.. Even the archived videos from yesterday which should play crash the player after the first few seconds on the Surface RT.. Tried the embedded video, crashes.. Downloaded the MP4 files.. crashes the video player..

Going to have to use the desktop or old laptop to watch these I guess. Pretty embarrassing.

So I was watching the stream yesterday from my Surface in the non-Desktop (Modern?) version of IE 10. We built in specific fallbacks so that you could view the stream. I'm not sure what specific issues you had but it was working in our tests.

@DTC: We stream to flash as well as Silverlight for just this reason. Do you have Flash installed on your Surface? I just tried on the device we have here and it streamed the current live content fine, and then I went and played the day one keynote. It played fine as well, in HTML 5.

We were just recently added to the Flash white list for IE 10 non-Desktop. There's a chance that if your machine doesn't have that most up to date list, it's not letting our fall back Flash player load since it thinks that Channel 9 isn't allowed to use Flash content. We're looking at some ways to check your version of the list or how to get it to update. One method that worked for Duncan was to go to another site that's on the white list (in this case new Star Wars owners Disney) and then come back to Channel 9.

It is possible that the white list for flash is not updated on my surface. when I try to go to the live stream, it offers a link to watch the "WMV version" but doesn't say anything else about flash on that page. If you click the link for the WMV version, then it basically can't open it on the Surface.

As second issue that I posted.. I have downloaded several MP4 files from yesterday and they seem to crash the player after the first few seconds. If I try to watch the embedded version from yesterday, I get the same thing.. Starts to play and then crashes.. I realize this is probably nothing to do with the content, but maybe something to do with the player itself. Just odd that THIS content crashes the player vs other content I have tried and works.

I checked the file and your site is not listed that I can find. I set in tools/compatibility view the checkbox to download the new list. Not sure if that happens immediately.. I'll watch the file and check it again..

Either way, it should be easier than this.. Users are not going to be able to mess with this and will expect it to work.

They never really fixed this issue. Every time RT updates, practically every website that runs adobe flash player wont play anymore. I'm talking some real obscure ones like yahoo and YouTube. The best part is that there is like zero apps available in the windows store to do anything. And if you ask tech questions, you get answers like the apologist above, who tell you that 1) they've thought of everything and you don't really understand your tablet, and 2)Microsoft is great and they already thought of that and it works great!!! Like for example that I bought this tablet primarily to stream videos to my TV. But ev en after buying the output cab le, it literally almost never plays, it constantly interrupts, exporting it to the TV is impossible since the only time you can adjust the settings is when it's connected, and when it's connected you can't adjust the settings. Stuff like that. Then you ask questions in tech support, there;s a hundred other guys asking the same question, and the response is, you guessed it : 1)There;s no problem like that, the new surface plays videos flawlessly, we thought of everything, and 2)you should get the new xbox one, it changes the game for the living room. Windows 8 is kind of controversial, windows RT is not. It is a joke, which would be less of a joke if there were actual apps in the store, but there aren't any because everyone hates RT so much that no one is developing for it. Good luck with your problems, I'm sure the Microsoft guys will tell you that the system is idiot proof, they thought of everything and btw, it works great.

Thread Closed

This thread is kinda stale and has been closed but if you'd like to continue the conversation,
please create a new thread in our Forums, or
Contact Us and let us know.